Kewanee actor Neville Brand remembered at Boss Center event

Neville Brand, who perhaps attained more national fame than any other Kewaneean, was remembered fondly at a special program Wednesday evening at the Boss Community Center.

Brand enjoyed a career of more than 30 years in movies and television, appearing in dozens of films and shows. He was a 1939 Kewanee High School graduate who went to Hollywood shortly after his discharge from the Army following World War II.

He’s being honored this week with the creation of a mural on the wall of the Wanee Cinemas, part of the Prairie Chicken Festival

At Wednesday’s program Larry Lock, president of the Kewanee Historical Society, briefly reviewed Brand’s life and acting career, and pointed out a number of photos and other Brand memorabilia that had been brought to the Boss Center for the occasion.

Ziegler thanked the organizers of the program, and said, “This is really moving. I know that my Uncle Nev would have gotten a big kick out of this.”

While she remembers Neville attending family events while she was growing up, she shared stories about the actor that her mother told her.

On Sundays, Ziegler said, Barbara and Neville would walk to church. One time Barbara’s shoe got caught in a switch on the railroad tracks and Neville freed her shortly before a train came by.

Another time Neville bloodied the nose of a boy who was harassing him and his sister. He had Barbara run home and get him a clean shirt to replace the bloody one he was wearing — before their mother found out.

Ziegler said her mother told her Neville was a “kind and generous person — the opposite of many of the roles he played.” Brand played a psychotic killer in the 1950 film “DOA,” portrayed Al Capone in the pilot episode for the TV series “The Untouchables” and played the part of the man who killed Elvis Presley in “Love Me Tender.”

After graduating from Kewanee High, Neville enlisted in Kewanee’s National Guard Unit, and enlisted in the Army in March 1941, before Pearl Harbor. Lock said apparently his unit didn’t see combat until early 1945, just a few months before Germany surrendered.

But he saw plenty of action in those few months. Ziegler told the story of how Brand “advanced from tree to tree” on a house in which German machine guns were hidden, went in through the back door and killed all five soldiers manning the guns.

Brand sustained a gunshot wound in Germany just a few weeks before the surrender in May of 1945.

Page 2 of 2 - By 1946 he was studying acting on the GI bill, and learned his craft well. “He was a great actor with a wide range of emotional capabilities,” Ziegler said.

She said she recalled get-togethers at her grandmother’s home in Kewanee which Neville attended. He always made it a point to speak to each of the children at the affair, she said.

“He gave each of us a little joy in our lives,” Ziegler said. “Most of all, I believe Neville Brand was true to himself — a real-life hero.”

Gary Costenson of Kewanee displayed a flask that Brand had given his father John Costenson, a classmate and teammate on the football team. The Costenson family still has the flask 82 years after Brand made it.

Gary recalled how his father would call the kids around the TV set when a movie or show featuring Neville Brand came on. He’d point Brand out, and say, “I knew that guy!”